For crumb, success has come one bit at a time

Craig Marine, EXAMINER STAFF CRITIC

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, May 22, 1996

It's 11 o'clock in the morning and the members of crumb are gathered on a quiet Excelsior District street rubbing their eyes, inhaling a cigarette breakfast and waiting for their drummer to make his way out of bed and open the front door. Bobby Alt emerges and starts talking about some session work he was doing - well, trying to do - the night before.

"The singer stayed in the bathroom for like five hours," says Alt, shaking his head. "They had to call the management company to make sure he was going to come through."

This little glimpse of a certain type of rock 'n' roll lifestyle - it's evident the singer wasn't in the john for gastrointestinal reasons - sets the boys to laughing, not above sharing a chuckle at the foibles of another.

Not that crumb is ready to join the Oral Roberts Purity In Music Tour anytime soon - boys will be boys - but with their first album less than a month old and getting a great reception, their first extensive tour set to begin soon and their band name taking up the whole Columbus Street side of the Tower Records building, the crumbs are not about to toss things away for five hours of dancing with Morpheus.

"My mother actually cried when I told her we had gotten a recording contract," said 20-year-old lead singer Robby Cronholm once the band was inside and arrayed around an assortment of thrift store couches. "And they weren't tears of joy."

Cronholm is one of the two band members - along with guitarist and co-songwriter Mark Weinberg, 21, who were born in San Francisco.

Bassist Matt Powell, 22, who is sitting cross-legged strumming a guitar and looking like he's practicing looks for a rockumentary, migrated from Florida and spent some time sleeping in his car before hooking up with the band. Drummer Alt, 20, is a Jersey boy.

If ever it were possible to assemble a group of more unassuming, modest and down-to-earth rockers it would be hard to do in this town. Their new album, "Romance Is a Slow Dance" (on Warner Bros.' Qwest label), is a driving, energy-packed effort, filled with potential hits. Their first single, "Shoegazer," has already been getting steady airplay locally on Live 105. They have a video for MTV ready. And with Cronholm's lyrics, the tunes all go deeper than most of what's out there now, the songs filled with the complexity of loving, disappointment, anger, joy and, ultimately, a hard rocking redemption. This is a band that can go places, and here they are talking not about fast cars and faster women, but of the support of their parents, who finally came around to the idea that being in a band did not necessarily equal early morning trips to the emergency room.

Looks are exchanged, coffee is dismissed. Talk turns to the definition of success.

"Success comes in stages," says Weinberg, the most talkative of the bunch, as befitting his father's legal background. "For a long time, success meant getting a record deal. Now that the record is out, it shifts to selling some records, getting it played on the radio, building our following. It comes incrementally."

FOR Alt, success means "being able to play drums all the time with this band." Alt hadn't yet joined the band when

"Romance" was recorded, but his drumming blows the cymbals off the two drummers used on the record, including hot-shot former Beck drummer Joey Waronker.

"I've found success," says Powell, who has generally been content to sit and listen while the more loquacious of his mates hold court. "This is success, being paid to play music when it's all I want to be doing anyway. Make a great album, go out on the road - it's hard to want more."

Cronholm is already thinking of the next album. Being able to make it would be success to him. Tall, fidgety, stylishly dressed like some geek science teaching assistant, Cronholm is the biggest enigma, largely since, through his lyrics, he is both the most and least accessible member.

THE songs are filled with choice images, snatches of the everyday and beyond. At various times he writes: "He spends himself in his entirety. Trying to get her in liquid." ; "Mourning for the death of your ever present pout." ; "Perhaps the stories always end with me. Bottle caps in a pocket change tray." ; "You, me, gazebo, lie, blue blazer, backyard fly. Why don't you ever comfort me?" And from "Shards and Tweeters," the revelatory,

"I'm not young enough to know everything anymore."

"I like that line," says Cronholm. "I took it from a book of sayings. I hope we don't get sued. Mostly it just means I'm more down to earth. When I was maybe 16 through 18 I thought I was a bad-ass. It was complete rebellion - against what I'm not sure, but against most everything. Now I'm doing what I want to be doing, maybe that's the biggest difference. I'm not as reckless. I'm not getting into trouble."

He's also not above poking fun at his work, calling the lyrics for "Shoegazer," a type of suicide-as-revenge tune, "completely melodramatic. Consider this a small apology."

The band has been soaking up the perks of being signed - meeting members of bands they remain fans of, the occasional free lunch, the simple things. They also let loose with the occasional unguarded comment, as when they talk of working with Tom O'Heir, who produced two of their favorite bands, Dinosaur Jr. and Sebadoh.

"I couldn't believe we could sound like that," Weinberg says remembering when he heard some of the first playbacks in the studio. "I thought our demo was good, but after Tom helped us, I couldn't believe it was us."

The band will tour the West Coast soon, then if things go well, maybe head back East. "I've never been east of St. Louis," says Cronholm. "That would be a lot of fun."

And Weinberg summed up the entire crumb experience thus far when he leaned back on the couch and said, in the best rock star form, "Rock 'n' roll called us and we answered the phone." So far, it seems like a very good connection.&lt;